1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a safety scanner and, more particularly, to an improvement of a safety scanner that receives reflected light from an object within a detection area to sense an intruder within a protection area.
2. Description of Related Art
An optical safety sensor is an area monitoring device which optically senses an intruder such as a person intruded into a protection area and outputs a safety control signal for emergently stopping a machine tool or an industrial robot (e.g., JP 2009-296087 A and JP 2009-294734 A).
For example, a safety scanner is an optical scanning area monitoring device provided with a light emitting part which emits detection light toward an object, a light receiving part which receives reflected light from the object and generates a light receiving signal, a distance calculation part which obtains a distance to the object on the basis of the light receiving signal, and a scanning part which causes the detection light to perform scanning in the circumferential direction around a rotation axis. Sensing of an intruder is performed by identifying the position of an object from the distance to the object and a scanning angle of the detection light and checking the identified position against a protection area.
Setting data which includes area designation information designating the protection area and measurement setting information designating a measurement condition is created using a setting support device. An information processing terminal such as a personal computer is used as the setting support device. The setting support device is capable of acquiring distance measurement information from the safety scanner and displaying the acquired distance measurement information on a screen. For example, in the setting support device, a scan image which includes a plurality of distance measurement information items obtained by performing scanning with the detection light, the plurality of distance measurement information items being represented as a plurality of distance measurement positions on a scanning plane of the detection light, is displayed. Many distance measurement information items can be promptly grasped by displaying such a scan image.
However, in a conventional optical safety system, in order to check a plurality of distance measurement information items obtained by performing scanning with the detection light, it is necessary to connect the safety scanner to the setting support device. Thus, disadvantageously, an operation of checking an operating state such as whether or not the safety scanner is correctly installed or whether or not the safety scanner is appropriately operating is troublesome.